Your Right to Know

Cuts to city services will be made and they’ll be felt, Gahanna officials said last night after
nearly 52 percent of Gahanna voters rejected a 1 percent increase to the city’s income tax.

The increase would have been the city’s first since Jimmy Carter was president. The increase,
from 1.5 percent to 2.5 percent, was needed to fill an expected $8 million budget gap — about $3
million of which is due to cuts in state funding. Lost revenue from the recession also has hampered
road repairs and funding of safety services and parks, city officials said.

Now, said Gahanna Mayor Becky Stinchcomb, “Cuts are inevitable. And people will feel them.”
Specific cuts have not been decided.

The majority of Gahanna residents would have paid a lower effective rate, thanks to a change in
the city’s tax credit, approved by the city council on Monday.

The city’s tax credit would have increased from 83.3 percent to 100 percent, meaning that
Gahanna residents who work in Columbus, which also has a 2.5 percent rate, would not have paid an
additional 0.25 percent to Gahanna. The credit legislation will be repealed.

About 5,500 Gahanna residents work in Gahanna and would have been subject to a full 1 percent
more in income tax. Retirees are not taxed on retirement incomes.

“I’m disappointed,” said Stinchcomb, who attended 22 citizen presentations and sent two mailings
to Gahanna residents. “I guess the message either wasn’t perceived or believed that this money was
needed.”

Twelve percent voter turnout, according to final, unofficial results from the Franklin County
Board of Elections, indicates “a certain amount of voter apathy,” she said. “We knew going in that
it was going to be an uphill battle because it had been 35 years since we had been on the ballot.
That’s a generation.”